Creighton University

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This University is named for Edward and John A. Creighton -- Ohio farm boys who gained immortality in the West. They helped to link our coasts by telegraph during the Civil War. They pioneered as cattlemen on the Laramie Plains, as merchants in the Montana gold fields, as financiers and devoted citizens of their adopted city. By stagecoach and muleback Edward surveyed the western telegraph route and was a prime builder for the line completed in 1861. The Creightons provided poles, surveyed, built, rebuilt or raised and collected subscriptions for a good portion of the lines extending west from Buffalo, N. Y., to San Francisco. In 1863 Edward became the initial president of the first national bank opened in Omaha. This civic leader gave freely of his time and substance to assure Omaha's position as eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. Thus, both major national projects of the last half of the nineteenth century owed much to these pioneers. Creighton University, a memorial to these men, opened its doors in 1878. It has grown to this complex institution with many academic divisions.